The invention relates to an apparatus for controlling the operation of an internal combustion engine so as to provide maximum power or minimum fuel consumption for the prevailing operational conditions.
In a known apparatus described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,064,846, issued Dec. 27, 1977 to Latsch et al, the fuel metering is optimized, depending upon the load status, to maximum output or minimum fuel consumption. The optimizing makes use of the information given in the performance graph as parameters, specifically the fuel consumption per unit of time plotted over the aspirated air quantity per unit of time at a constant rpm. At a constant air quantity and with a variation of the fuel quantity, the output torque can be optimized, while the operational point of minimum specific fuel consumption can be determined by means of a variation of the air quantity (by means of a bypass, for instance) and with a constant fuel quantity.
Thus in the known optimizing apparatus it is required that either the fuel quantity or the air quantity must be varied, depending upon the variable to be optimized.
This involves significant expense, which, especially in the case of mass production of optimizing systems, appears to be insupportably high.